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At 10:35 -0500 9/5/02, Rick Tarara wrote:******************************************************
make any headway on the
If we want to know why the public schools can't
problems they face, we need only look to the abovecomment. When something
is proposed that would have a measurable effect onimproving the school
LEARNING climate, it is immediately opposed by somemisguided 'civil
liberties' concern. If the proposal gets a littlefather--then the lawyers
will jump in. We should always keep in mind whythe tax payers are footing
the bill for public education--I think it is toproduce citizens with the
skills and knowledge to be contributors to thesociety. As much as
possible, those factors that significantly detractfrom that goal should be
eliminated.It is not a given that uniforms promote better
academics.
I have been on both ends of this "debate." The high
school I attended
had a "uniform" of sorts--for girls. This was in the
50s. The rule
was that girls had to wear white blouses and blue
skirts (school
colors), Monday through Thursday. They could wear
whatever they
wanted on Friday. The reason for the rule was
economic. Our district
had a wide range of parental incomes, from very
wealthy to on
welfare, and the uniforms tended to suppress the
ostentatious display
of that wealth. It wasn't considered necessary to
put uniforms on the
boys since we all wore blue jeans and t-shirts all
the time,
regardless of how wealthy our families were, so it
was a de facto
uniform. I didn't see any noticeable effect on
academic performance.
The good kids did well; the screw-ups didn't,
regardless of what they
could or couldn't wear.
Where I am now, there is no dress code whatever
(although there is
some rumblings of doing something along those lines,
but it hasn't
progressed very far). So we see students in all
sorts of states of
dress, from the bizarre and shock inducing to the
squarest of the
square. Some of the more bizarre dressers are among
our best
students. Some of the worst grade-grubbers are the
square dressers.
Aside from the possible irrelevance of uniforms for
academic
performance, the idea also runs roughshod over the
dress standards of
any number of religious groups. When one combines
the idea of a
uniform with the "zero tolerance" wave of stupidity
overwhelming our
schools these days, we get such nonsense as an
orthodox Jew being
expelled for wearing a Yarmulka, or a Sikh for
wearing a turban, in
violation of the "no hats" rule, or a Mennonite girl
being expelled
for wearing a full length skirt when the uniform
code specifies a
skirt "just below the knee." When one starts
allowing exceptions,
however, we find that the ones who get the
exceptions are "marked,"
and subject to ridicule or worse by their fellow
students. How does
this contribute to an improved academic climate? And
how is a "civil
liberties" concern over such issues "misguided"?
Private schools are free to do what they want in
this matter. Those
who don't want to conform tot he code don't have to
go there. Public
schools are different. My impression of students who
dress in bizarre
or overly suggestive ways, is that they are seeking
attention,
especially attention from the adults, and the best
way to deal with
them is to pay no attention to their
attention-getting antics, or, if
they have become disruptive, deal with the issue in
private. Often,
the student's peers will make it clear to the
offender that they
don't approve of what they are doing, and that
usually will stop it.
One day I had a pretty good student show up with
green, spiked hair.
All I did was casually remark that his lawn service
was doing pretty
well on the fertilizer but their mower was clearly
badly in need of
repair. The next day his hair was back to normal
(except that it took
some time for the green to wash out).
Hugh
--
Hugh Haskell
<mailto:haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto:hhaskell@mindspring.com>
(919) 467-7610
Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want
to, Windows because they
have to..